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What modeling technique / tool / diagram would you recommend for using rails / grails?

I'm interested in a diagramming methodology that can capture user interaction in a way that will include "screens" along with "actions" and how they are driven by controllers, views and services.

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You can read this interesting article http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1926-a-shorthand-for-designing-ui-flows from 37 signals (the firm that brought Rails to life).



I jump, it helps you.

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Diagrams for your business models can be easily obtained with a tool like this handy Ruby script to dump your current ActiveRecord schema to UML.It creates XMI 1.1 to UML 1.3 (visible in StarUML for example .)

A simple utility using it might look something like this:

namespace :uml do
  desc "Generates db/schema.xml file describing the current DB as seen by AR."
  task :schema => :environment do
    require 'lib/uml_dumper.rb'
    File.open("db/schema.xml", "w") do |file|
      ActiveRecord::UmlDumper.dump(ActiveRecord::Base.connection, file)
    end 
    puts "Done. Schema XMI created as db/schema.xml."
  end
end


Once you have your models, it is simply a matter of creating a relationship that describes the relationship between your data layer (model design pattern) and the business logic / view layer (controller design patterns view).

However, unless your project has truly extraordinary requirements, you are almost certainly overestimating your interface. The view / action diagrams mentioned earlier and advocated by 37signals are perfect for capturing 80% of user stories.

In short: if a lot of your interactions are growing so labyrinthine, you feel the need for an additional modeling language to describe them, it might be time to consider why they are so complex in the first place.

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